Image of the week: New brew
Starbucks, long a touch lukewarm, has gone cold. Sales have fallen for two consecutive quarters. Prices, as they have in other coffee chains, have gone up since the pandemic and it is also being boycotted for its perceived support for Israel, having made the error of suing a workers’ union that expressed solidarity with Palestinians.
A longer-term problem, in the US at least, is that in-store queues have lengthened – to as much as 40 minutes, according to some customer complaints – as its baristas struggle to juggle app, drive-through and in-person orders.
This week, however, the board’s move to discard Laxman Narasimhan, its chief executive of just over a year, and replace him with Chipotle Mexican Grill boss Brian Niccol, saw its share price surge and Chipotle’s drop. That’s because Niccol is seen as a turnaround expert, one who can bring in customers even as competitors wane.
Former Starbucks chief executive Howard Schultz, who led the brand through its global expansion years, approves of Niccol’s appointment, though it is perhaps the views of Starbucks’ activist investors that really count. Schultz, incidentally, thinks Starbucks should refocus on coffee – now there’s an idea.
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In numbers: Deep freeze
$1.45 billion
Sum made by animation sequel Frozen II at the box office in 2019, surpassing the original.
$1.56 billion
Box office this year for another Disney sequel, Inside Out 2, giving it the title of highest-grossing animated film of all time.
3
Years until Disney will unveil Frozen III, with the movie studio this week announcing a release date of November 2027, some 14 years after the original, and confirming that a fourth film in the franchise is in development.
Getting to know: Reed O’Connor
Reed O’Connor is a federal judge in Fort Worth, Texas. He also owns shares in Elon Musk’s electric vehicle maker, Tesla, a fact revealed in a report by NPR (National Public Radio), who called him Musk’s “new favourite federal judge”. O’Connor was due to hear two high-profile cases: one filed by Musk’s social media platform X claiming that a consortium of advertisers illegally conspired to pull advertising from the site, and an earlier one taken by X against the media watchdog group Media Matters.
O’Connor – who owned somewhere between $15,001 and $50,000 in Tesla stock as of 2022 – has now removed himself from X’s case against the advertisers, not specifying a reason. The honour falls to his US district judge colleague Ed Kinkeade in Dallas instead.
The list: Trump’s musical objectors
Canadian singer Celine Dion has become the latest musical artist to make plain that she did not authorise or in any way endorse the use of her music by Donald Trump. “And really, THAT song?” she said, after her Titanic soundtrack ballad My Heart Will Go On was played at one of the Republican presidential nominee’s rallies. So which other musicians have distanced themselves?
1. The Rolling Stones: Trump used the Stones’ You Can’t Always Get What You Want so often the band eventually threatened legal action.
2. Estate of Sinéad O’Connor: In a joint statement with Chrysalis Records, the late singer’s estate said earlier this year that she would have been “disgusted, hurt and insulted” by his use of Nothing Compares 2 U.
3. Johnny Marr: “Consider this s**t shut down right now,” said the Smiths guitarist after a Trump rally plumped for the band’s Please Please Please Let Me Get What I Want.
4. REM: The band has also been moved to make legal threats after Trump’s use of its songs It’s the End of the World as We Know It (And I Feel Fine), Everybody Hurts and Losing My Religion, all classics to be fair.
5. Rihanna: In 2018, the pop star said “[neither] me nor my people would ever be at or around one of those tragic rallies” after Trump’s people played her hit Don’t Stop the Music. If only he would stop it.
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